Note that the data published in the 2002 State of the Nation’s Ecosystems Report as well as the 2003 and 2005 Web-Only Updates have been superseded by the 2008 Report and thus should be used with caution. For the most recent data, purchase the 2008 Report from Island Press.

The Indicator

The gross value of agricultural production is a measure of the physical output of major crops and livestock multiplied by price (in dollars) received by producers. (The values have all been converted to 2003 dollars.)

The geographic distribution of agricultural sales is a measure of gross sales by crop and livestock producers per square mile. These data do not reflect payments received by producers through government income support, commodity, or conservation programs, nor do they reflect economic activity associated with food processing and distribution or off-farm service and supply businesses.

The Data

Data Source: Data on the dollar value of agricultural sales are from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Economic Research Service (ERS), which reports farm income and farm cash receipts. Data for agricultural sales per square mile are from the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), Regional Economic Information System branch (http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/regional/reis/), which calculates county cash receipts.

Data Collection and Manipulation (Dollar Value of Agricultural Sales): The USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) conducts national surveys that measure acres planted and harvested, yields, production, and market prices. The estimates include cash receipts from the marketing of about 150 crop and livestock commodities.

ERS uses NASS-published, calendar-year cash receipts for major livestock and commodity-producing states. ERS develops indexes to indicate direction and magnitude of changes in monthly sales quantities and multiplies them by NASS-published monthly prices. Data for other states are developed in cooperation with the NASS state offices, which use all available sources, including informed opinions, often corroborated by data from state survey programs, producer associations, and the state’s extension service. California data come from state-conducted surveys.

ERS adjusts NASS quantity and value of production data for major crop commodities in major producing states to adjust for production of feed used on farms for livestock and for Commodity Credit Corporation sales and to account for the fact that some sales do not take place in the same year as the crop is harvested. Data from NASS that cannot be released to the public because of confidentiality constraints are included in the overall ERS dataset.

Data were adjusted for inflation using the Gross Domestic Product Implicit Price Deflator (IPD) provided by the Economic Research Service. All data were adjusted to the average level of prices that existed in 2003. The following formula was used to convert each figure in the series from current dollars to constant dollars (available at http://www.bea.gov/bea/an/nipaguid.pdf).

Data Collection and Manipulation (Agricultural Sales per Square Mile): The U.S. Department of Commerce’s BEA uses a variety of data sources to develop county-level estimates of farm receipts. For 16 major producing states, NASS-affiliated state offices prepare annual county estimates of farm cash receipts. For other states, state-level cash receipts estimates produced by NASS are allocated by BEA to counties in proportion to the corresponding Census of Agriculture data for the relevant year. These county-level data were used to produce county-level estimates of cash receipts per square mile by dividing total cash receipts by the number of square miles in a county. County area data are from a standard dataset produced by Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. (ESRI; http://www.esri.com), a maker of geographic information system software and data products.

Data Access: Data on U.S. national farm cash receipts for 1924–2003 are available online at http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/farmincome/finfidmu.htm.

The U.S. county cash receipts data can be requested through BEA, Regional Economic Information System branch (http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/regional/reis/).

2003 Web Site Update: Data for 2000-2002 were added in this update. Data for the U.S. national farm receipts were obtained from the ERS web site listed, whereas the county specific data were taken from the Regional Economic Information System (REIS) CDROM, 1969-2001; RCN-0316CD-ROM, which can be ordered at: http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/uguide.htm#_1_25.

2005 Web Site Update: Data for 2003 and 2004 were added in this update. Data for the U.S. national farm receipts were obtained from the ERS web site listed in Data Access, whereas the county specific data were obtained from the Regional Economic Information System (REIS) website also listed in Data Access.